2017 was a dizzying year for Uber: the company dealt with the sexism version of engineer Susan Fowler during his time at Uber, lost a CEO and won a new one, and faced a demand for Waymo, just to mention some events Along the way, Uber published its first diversity report, and the results were surprisingly better than expected. Although Uber was still a predominantly white and masculine company, like many technology companies in Silicon Valley, it published a better representation of women, blacks and Latinos than Facebook, Airbnb or Pinterest.
The second Uber diversity report has just been published, and it is the company's first report since Dara Khosrowshahi took over as CEO last August. Since March 2017, many things in the company have changed, and Khosrowshahi has been entrusted with the task of reversing the toxic culture of sexual harassment in the workplace that prevailed under Travis Kalanick. So, how well have you done so far? The report shows that Uber is making modest progress in diversity, despite efforts to pool resources in employee support groups and hire a diversity sourcing team.
First, your gender statistics: as of March 2018, 62% of Uber's male employees, and 38 percent of employees are female. Those figures are higher than last year's figures of 63.9 percent for men and 36.1 percent for women. (There is no percentage of non-binary people)
The gender disparity widens when you look at Uber technology employees versus non-technical employees: women only account for 17.9 percent of technology positions in Uber, while men own 82.1 percent jobs. It is a slow single-digit progress. In 2017, 15.4 percent of women had technology jobs compared to 84.6 percent of men.
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Uber seems to have progressed more in regions outside the USA. UU., Especially in Latin America, where with 47 percent women and 52.9 percent men, the gap is almost closed. In 2017, numbers in Latin America told a different story: women were behind men by almost 20 percentage points to 40 percent.
At the top of the totem pole, technological leadership is composed of 15.6 percent women and 84.4 percent men. Last year's numbers were 11.3 percent women and 88.7 percent men. Even Uber admits that he is not yet where he should be. The number of women leaders in non-technical positions has fallen to 22.3 percent this year compared to 26.2 percent last year.
Uber remains predominantly white with 48.6 percent, Asian with 32.3 percent, black clock at 8.1 percent, and Latinx at 6.1 percent. Again, when it comes to technological positions, the gap widens further. Black and Latino people have a total of 5.6 percent of technological functions, compared to the collective 3.1 percent in 2017. Interestingly, the number of Asian people in technological functions has decreased to 44.7 percent, down from 47.9 percent in 2017.
While the numbers do not disclose the actual corporate culture and if the marginalized employees feel more supported and comfortable in Uber, they are tangible results that can be measured. It is one of the ways guardians and activists can continue to blame technology companies like Uber.
